Transcript excerpt from a Boosted podcast episode (Season 7, Ep. 3) featuring Mark Simpson interviewing David Jacoby of Hostfully about self check-in for short-term rentals. The discussion covers common pitfalls (technology failure, degraded guest experience, safety concerns), mitigation strategies (backups, automated messaging, digital guidebooks), and an introduction to Hostfully’s platforms (property management software and guest communications/guidebooks).
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There are a lot of people watching or listening to this and they will fall under B and B. Guest house hotel owner on my right hand side here and on my left hand side will have the rental owner. Now, like we say when it comes to rental, specifically when you don't live on site, the self checking will be something that you are more commonly known for. Like you say the key or the padlock. We have the key combination but there's obviously pitfalls to that. Now could you just sort of elaborate for people who don't know some potential pitfalls when it comes to having a self checking system?
I'd say three big buckets would be just the technology failing, the guest experience standpoint, having a decreased quality on that and then some safety measures when you don't have a person there greeting them. So. So taking each of those one at a time, the technology failing, that's obvious. I heard about a some I forgot which system it was and I don't want to bad method anyways. But one smart lock, there was some system update that just automatically happened and they got bricked and they just literally didn't work unless you had to physically go and do a factory reset of those smart locks. So imagine if it's a vacation home and you're not near there and the guest goes in and they can't, it's broken, they can't get in. You know, having an old school key, you're kind of wishing for that at that time. So you need to make sure you have some kind of backup, especially if it's not your home and you're not there. So in general related to self check in, but just things to think about when having, when wanting to make it personal, there's ways to do it without you actually being there, right? So you can have automated emails and texts that get sent to the guest before, before they arrive as well as after they've arrived. The next day, send them a text, whether you're personally doing it or through your property management software. Just checking in, making sure everything's okay. Also of course our guidebook. We really help in that area because it makes you look more professional and gives you a personal experience in general to that guest.
Welcome to the Boosted podcast. We're in season seven, episode three and today we are talking about the future of hospitality and is self checking going to be essential or not? Now joining me on this episode we have David Jacoby of host Fleet and what we are going to be discussing in detail is a little bit more about what self checking is and how we as hospitality businesses can potentially get sorted for what could be coming. So without further ado, I welcome David to the podcast. David, if you could please introduce firstly yourself, introduce hostfully and just let us know all about you, all about the company and then we will get started.
Thanks so much for having me. Appreciate it. Big fan of what you're up to and love the hospitality community and getting connected earlier this year was real exciting. So excited to be on this podcast so hostfully. We are a platform for hosts for property managers to help them run their business from tip to tail. Essentially we have two separate platforms. One is a full service property management software that helps you list your properties on multiple channels like Airbnb and vrbo and your own website and automate emails to the guests and have a central reservation system calendar so you don't get double bookings, owner portal so you can tell the owners about how often the place is being booked and how much they're making if you're renting it out on behalf of owners, stuff like that. Our other platform is a guest communications platform, essentially digital guidebooks. So we take that mediocre looking three ring binder and bring it into the 21st century and make it real easy to share important information to the guests. So about nine years ago now, my wife and I, we took a one year sabbatical and we traveled around the world. We had our one year of fun before we had kids. Not that this isn't fun, Mark, right, Just a different kind of fun.
Different kind of fun.
And we went to 27 countries and five continents and ended up staying in 38 homes during that trip. Some was through traditional vacation rentals, some through friends of friends. Today.
